Rakesh Asthana, a senior IPS officer of Gujarat cadre, was appointed the new Delhi Police Commissioner, the Union Home Ministry said on Tuesday. Asthana, currently serving as the director general of the Border Security Force, will replace Balaji Srivastava.
The appointment of Asthana to the post came just days before his superannuate on July 31. He will have a tenure of one year.
The home ministry said in an official notification that Director General of ITBP S.S. Deswal has been given the additional charge of the post of BSF DG.
This is one of the very few instances when an IPS officer outside of the AGMUT cadre has been appointed as the Delhi Police chief. Usually, an officer belonging to the Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram and Union Territory (AGMUT) cadre is appointed to the post.
A 1984 batch officer, Asthana has also served as the Special Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation. During his stint in the CBI in 2018, he was engaged in an unsavoury spat with the then CBI Director Alok Verma with both of them levelling allegations of corruption against each other.
Both the officers were later removed from the central probe agency by the Union government and Asthana was subsequently cleared of the charges.
—With PTI inputs
